Ever since reporters started using Twitter, an old guard of
newspaper hands has complained that the micro-blogging site is
undermining the art of journalism, 140 characters at a time. But
Twitter is actually more of a threat to a particular strain of
journalism, a mostly noble one: press criticism. On Twitter,
every journalist is a press critic. This may sound like a good
thing: Journalism, more than most institutions, would seem to
benefit from self-scrutiny. But, trust me, it isn’t. Twitter
opens a window into journalists’ minds and, often times, the view
ain’t pretty.

Take one example from last week: ABC White House correspondent
Jake Tapper’s near meltdown last week over the Twitter meme
#nprgoesnazi. Taking Fox News chief Roger Ailes’ comment to The Daily Beast’s Howard
Kurtz that NPR is run by “Nazis", Twitter users began
re-imagining NPR’s programming for Das Fuhrer: “This American
Life” became “This American Reich,” etc. When jokes started
veering towards the Holocaust, Tapper was quick to wag his
finger, as might seem appropriate. But note his method: First, he
tweeted, “Going off twitter. Let me know when
the liberals joking about the Holocaust (in response to Ailes'
comments) stop.” After a 24-minute sabbatical, Tapper returned to
say he was equally offended when Glenn Beck mentioned
the Holocaust and announced, “i dont have a different standard
for people who trivialize the Holocaust based on their politics.”

By attacking both liberals and Beck, and then announcing his own
lack of a double standard, Tapper used his purported offense at
the joke as an excuse to trumpet his own objectivity and high
standards. Such self-promotion is the yeast that makes Twitter
press criticism rise. Journalists attack other publications in
ways meant to emphasize their own superiority to the thing they
mock; they type with one hand and hold their noses with the
other.

Slate’s Dave Weigel, who was once one of the lead reporters
covering birther-queen Orly Taitz, now regularly uses Twitter to
snark at journalists who cover fringe politicians. “Haha, that
stupid guy is still stupid! Let’s hit him with rocks,” he wrote after Politico ran an article about
Alvin Greene’s presidential ambitions. When Sarah Palin
misidentified one of her own endorsees, National Journal’s Marc
Ambinder had his cake and ate it too by tweeting, “Hey
media--shiny Sarah Palin mini-gaffe--go wild!” with, of course, a
link to Palin’s error. Ambinder went on to berate other reporters
who covered Palin’s mistake, explaining he only mentioned it in the first place
because “I just want to see how quickly everyone becomes obsessed
with a typo.” (In Ambinder’s case, the answer was mere seconds.)

Such half-baked media criticism is so rampant on Twitter that
it’s already developed its own clichés. A concerned comedian
might want to sit down the Washington press corps and explain
that it’s not funny to tweet the word “BREAKING” followed by a
link to or summary of an article whose content the tweeting
journalist finds obvious. (For example, Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall: “BREAKING: Odds
are election results will be broadly in line with poll
consensus.”) The Awl’s Choire Sicha recently named and described
the “hate retweet,” in which a journalist simply
retweets without comment something he finds laughable; the
gesture drips with scorn.

Press criticism, of course, is a good thing and keeps everyone on
their toes. Still, there’s something about Twitter—maybe its the
faux-intimacy it intimates through real-time conversations, and
the instigating legions of like-minded followers (or, even
better, antagonistic competitors)—that, as Sicha writes, “is
literally designed to bring out the worst in people.” The worst
in people, when it comes to many writers, appears to be an
insecurity about their own standing in the journalistic firmament
and a consequential complex that attempts to camouflage this
insecurity with mockery and snark. BREAKING: Journalists have
been and will always be vicious gossips. But on Twitter, everyone
tastes their sour grapes.

Ben Crair is the Deputy News Editor of The Daily Beast. This
article originally appeared at The Daily Beast and is
republished here with permission.